CM Portfolio Company ZipLine Medical, Inc. announced it has completed a $19 million round of financing. Proceeds from the financing will be used to accelerate worldwide commercialization activities for its Zip® Surgical Skin Closure products. The financing was led by new investor, MVM Life Science Partners LLP(“MVM”), a venture capital firm based in London and Boston, which invests broadly across the healthcare sector. China Materialia LLC also participated in the financing.

“I am impressed by the broad applicability as well as extensive clinical and economic benefits of ZipLine’s products. This makes ZipLine® a perfect fit in our healthcare investment portfolio,” said Bali Muralidhar, M.D., Ph.D., partner at MVM. “We are pleased to participate in this new infusion of capital to help carry the company to the next level of growth and commercial success,” added Stephen Reeders, M.D., Ph.D., managing partner at MVM. Both Dr Muralidhar and Dr Reeders have joined ZipLine’s Board of Directors.

“This financing allows us to further expand our global sales and marketing activities leveraging the favorable clinical study results and strong support from key opinion leaders among clinicians,” said John Tighe, President and CEO of ZipLine Medical.

Studies continue to demonstrate the clinical and economic benefits of the Zip® Surgical Skin Closure device. As presented at the 2015 ISTA Conference in Vienna, a recent knee arthroplasty study at Hospital for Special Surgery in New York showed that, compared to staples, patients with the Zip device had significantly fewer wound complications, required no home health nurse visit (for removal), and had no patient-reported problems or wound-related readmissions. Similarly, as presented at the 2015 APHRS Conference in Melbourne, Australia, a pacemaker study at UCSD in San Diego, CA, showed that, compared to sutures, patients with the Zip® device had significant procedure time savings, less variance in wound closure time, and suture-like cosmetic outcomes.

ZipLine® Medical (www.ziplinemedical.com), founded by Amir Belson, M.D., and headquartered in Campbell, CA, is a medical device company that has developed cost-effective, noninvasive surgical skin closure devices for suture-like outcomes at the speed of staples. Over 25,000 surgical procedures have been performed worldwide with Zip® Surgical Skin Closure devices, and the Zip® is sold in over 30 countries. Because skin-closure is the common denominator of nearly all surgical procedures, Zip® Surgical Skin Closure devices have extensive applicability across multiple medical specialties. The Company’s addressable market opportunity is estimated at $4 billion worldwide. Zip® Surgical Skin Closure devices are classified by the U.S. FDA as ‘Class I, 510(k) Exempt’ and have received CE Mark.

Thingple has entered into a contract with Baosteel Gas to deploy an industrial gas cylinder management system based on UHF-RFID.

Baosteel Gas is one of the fastest-growing industrial gas companies in China. To ensure safety and track-ability of its gas cylinders, and to improve asset utilization rate and operation efficiency, Baosteel Gas looked worldwide for solutions based on electronic tagging of its cylinders. After rigorous selection process, Baosteel Gas selected Thingple as its exclusive partner in developing and deploying a SMART CYLINDER solution for its fleet of cylinders.

“We are delighted and honored to be selected as exclusive partner of Baosteel Gas to develop and deploy gas cylinder management system based on UHF-RFID. Thingple has spent last two years developing proprietary hardware and software platform, so that we could propose solutions that are modular, cost-effective, reliable and robust”. Chairman Dr. Zhou said, “RFID-based industrial gas cylinder tracking has been tempted by all major gas companies in the past, but none has commercialized in large scale because of difficulties in achieving 100% reliability in industrial setting. Thingple’s proprietary solution overcomes such difficulties with smartly-designed hardware and software”

“China Materialia is one of few investment firms I have come across that is expert in technology and product, and at the same time, very knowledgable about medical device market. They have been very helpful with introductions and business support in China”

“Xingtera is thrilled to have the support of Dr. Min Zhou, Managing Partner of China Materialia, and the entire CM team. Xingtera is privileged to be able to leverage Min’s insight and her knowledge of the Chinese market on a going forward basis. CM was instrumental in helping us close our Series B financing, and we were particularly impressed by her decisiveness in the process. We are proud to join CM’s portfolio and to have Min join Xingtera’s Board.”

Dr. Zhang Yan, the founder of Camray, and Dr. Dong Hu, the founder of iRock, both were selected in China’s “thousand talents program” for returnees in February 2015. Camray and iRock were funded by ChinaMaterialia as a lead investor.

China Materialia has invested in iRock Technologies, a high-technology company founded in 2010 in China by returnee, Dr. Hu Dong.

iRock Technologies provides digital special core analysis (SCAL) software and services to national and international oil companies. iRock leverage years of research from the Imperial College Consortium on Pore Scale Modeling to provide comprehensive reservoir insights that can affordably improve recovery factor for oil and gas companies worldwide. Sponsors of the Imperial Consortium include the UK Department of Trade and Industry, BG Group, BHP Billiton, ENI, PDO, Saudi Aramco, Schlumberger, Shell, Statoil, Total and iRock.

China Materialia has also joined iRock Technologies’ Board of Directors.

China Materialia’s portfolio company, ZipLine Medical, Inc. announced today that it has been awarded “2014 Best New Technology In Spine Care” by Orthopedics This Week for the Zip® Surgical Skin Closure device. The award was presented to ZipLine Medical’s President and CEO, John Tighe, at the North America Spine Society’s annual scientific meeting in San Francisco. The Zip® Surgical Skin Closure was selected by a distinguished panel of 5 board-certified orthopedic and spine surgeons on the basis of its originality, clinical relevance (including would the judges use the product themselves) and likelihood of improving patient outcomes.

China Materialia lead a $5.7 million extension round for Campbell California-based Zipline Medical. The financing extension included participation from existing investors RA Capital Management, Claremont Creek Ventures and XSeed Capital. Proceeds from the Series C extension will be used to expand sales and marketing activities.

“The noninvasive Zip® Surgical Skin Closure device is a transformative product with numerous applications across many markets around the world,” said Min Zhou, PhD, co-founder and CEO of China Materialia. “We see that Zip® is bringing significant benefits to patients while reducing hospital cost and infection rate. We are happy to support ZipLine Medical and help its expansion into China market,” added Dr. Zhou, who has joined ZipLine’s board of directors.

Before joining China Materialia, Mr. Donald Gao held investment management positions with China New Enterprise Capital based in Beijing, and Global Assets Investment based in silicon valley. Earlier in his career, Donald worked in Citigroup investment banking division, and held diplomatic position as an Economic and Commercial Vice Consul to the USA. Prior to that, Mr. Gao worked in China Ministry of Commerce where he was responsible for Sino-USA bilateral economic cooperation and negotiations in all national level hot button economic issues.